within four years of their mistake. See, e.g., Garcia v. Reverse Mortg. Sols., Inc. , No 04-18-00736-CV, 2019 WL 2996971, at *3 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 2019, no pet.) (holding that Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.051 “does not apply to a party filing a corrected instrument in the county’s public records” pursuant to Tex. Prop. Code § 5.029 ). Neither section 5.027, which pertains to correction instruments generally, nor sections 5.029 and 5.030, which pertain to material-correction instruments and their effect, mention any such time constraint. See Silguero v. CSL Plasma, Inc. , 579 S.W.3d 53, 59 (Tex. 2019) (noting the presumption that legislative omissions are purposeful). The Property Code does not require that parties correcting an instrument pursuant to 5.029 do so within four years of the mistake.” Broadway National Bank et al. v. Yates Energy Corporation et al. , 631 S.W.3d 16, 28 (Tex. 2021) (emphasis added).
that that the statute is clear and it is no problem to locate the proper party to execute a correction deed ie the heir/successor depending on the facts. The Court clearly stated that the only interpretative problem with the statute is where there is an assignment of all or part of an interest in a tract of land (which assignment contains a material error) and both the original party and assign remain locatable and available. That is, can the original party, without the joinder of the assign, execute a valid correction deed correcting a material mistake in an earlier deed? According to the Court, YES, subject to the potential rights of a BFP for value. RESULT: An original party (remembering that John had been conveyed an undivided 25% mineral interest in the lands at issue eight (8) years prior to the 2013 Correction Deed), not owning ANY interest in the royalty estate in the lands at issue, can join with the other original party to the assignment (in commonly understood legal terminology – grantor and grantee) and execute a valid correction deed more than four (4) years after the execution of the incorrect initial assignment and overturn a long established legal title without having any statute of limitations on what amounts to a non-judicial reformation of the original assignment.
It is interesting to note that the recent case cited as legal support in the Court’s opinion, Garcia v. Reverse Mortg. Sols., Inc. , did indeed hold: “Further, a statute of limitations precludes a party from bringing an action in court after a statutory amount of time has expired from when the cause of action accrued. See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE ANN. § 16.051. It does not apply to a party filing a corrected instrument in the county’s public records…” The foregoing quote is also a naked legal conclusion by an appeals court with no case precedent to back it up. In essence, by the Court’s adoption of this rule of law, does such adoption not make Broadway a case of first impression in Texas? Following that logic, did not the Court have the opportunity to decide the other way and hold that a correction deed was a de facto reformation and could only be held to be a valid correction deed if entered into within four (4) years from the date of the initial document containing the mutual mistake? It appears
A Comment About Reformation
Is a correction deed in essence a reformation of a previously incorrect deed containing a mutual mistake? If so, does such a reformation have to be made within four (4) years of the date of execution of the original instrument. The Court held:
“While we agree that the residual, four-year statute of limitations applies to reformation suits, we do not agree that the Bank’s action here was such a suit. Causes of action and self-help provisions are not interchangeable concepts. A distinction thus exists between (1) seeking the judicial remedy of deed reformation and (2) voluntarily seeking to correct a deed by agreement. Parties attempting the latter are not limited to doing so
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N at i onal A ssociation of D i v i s i on O rder A nalys t s
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